1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a method and to an apparatus for electronic page montage for reproduction technology, whereby the recording of the individual pages on a recording medium occurs with a recorder which comprises an electronic screening unit having a multi-track recording element with a resolution which is finer then the resolution of the image information, whereby, before recording, the entire end page is divided into sub-areas within which various motifs, such as image, text or artificially generated image information respectively supplied from different signal sources are recorded according to a layout, and are recorded with the recorder having the finer resolution.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In reproduction technology, combinations of images, letterings, signets, etc., are composed to form an end page having arbitrary arrangement and overlap according to a layout. Other than in a conventional way, such combinations were previously only executed off-line with full electronic systems, involving considerable time expenditure, whereby the individual images or text parts are present completely stored and are individually transferred into a short-time memory according to the layout. In this respect, for example, see DE-A No. 33 42 947 or DE-C No. 21 61 038 (Equivalent UK No. 1,407,487). How such combinations are implemented in detail may be seen, for example, in DE-C No. 21 37 676 (which is equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 3,904,816).
DE-A No. 32 23 730 (which is equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,989) discloses a method for composing and reproducing a picture and a letter using image signals and letter signals for application in an image reproducing machine wherein a switching between image signal and script signal occurs. An electronic screening unit comprising a multi-track recording element having a plurality of write tracks is provided, the individual screen points being generated during image recording such that the individual write tracks of the multi-track recording element are separately driven. Such a screening unit is also disclosed, for example, in DE-A No. 21 07 738 (equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 3,725,574).
The screening unit of FIG. 8 in DE-A No. 32 23 730 (which is equivalent to U.S. Pat. No. 4,496,989) is composed of a control unit in which drive signals for the individual write tracks are generated, these drive signals determining whether the light beam of a write track is turned on. The image information is reproduced by screen points which are formed as a coherent spot composed of a plurality of parallel write tracks The text information is recorded in that the individual write tracks are trace-unblanked and blanked at the contours of the letters for generating the letters. In order to obtain a combination of text and image information, OR gates are provided in the control lines which extend from the control unit to the individual write tracks. Dependent on the drive of these OR gates, thus, screen points or pure black-and-light information are recorded by the recording element. To this end, one group of the inputs of the OR gates are connected to the control unit of the screening unit; the other group of inputs of the OR gates supplies the text information. Dependent on which group of inputs is activated, thus, image or text is recorded.
The time when the OR gates switch determines the topical limitation between the image parts and text parts. With this circuit arrangement, thus, it is only possible to select between a text and an image or, respectively, an image part since the OR gates only allow these two selection possibilities.
In reproduction technology, however, there is often a desire to switch not only between an image and text, but it is frequently required to combine a plurality of images or image parts with a plurality of text parts or individual letters or texts having image content, gradation information or with constant tint value. This, however, is not possible with the arrangement disclosed in DE-A No. 32 23 730.
It is also known from "Druckwelt", November 1985, Pages 45 and 46, to undertake an image-text processing and whole-page recording with image-text systems. Images and text of a previously completely designed page are brought onto a line, i.e. onto a scan line, with microprocessors by parallel processing, this line being recorded by means of a laser setter. With the assistance of what is referred to as a layout programmer, the apparatus "Layout Programmer LP307" of Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell GmbH, Kiel, Federal Republic of Germany in the present case, layout and scan parameters are acquired and portrayed on a monitor. The disadvantage of this system is that the layout data, determined by the resolution, have the same resolution of the scanned image information, this leading to a stepping at the contours between two image details in the image combination within the end page. Further, only rectangular masks within the layout can be produced with this system, it following therefrom that the system is limited both in terms of quality and in terms of the geometry of the masks.